


Becoming

by scavengertrash



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Bisexual Kylo Ren, Car Accidents, Deepthroating, Dubious Consent, F/M, Face-Fucking, Fake Marriage, Knotting, Marriage of Convenience, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Oral Knotting, Oral Sex, Rape/Non-con Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:47:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scavengertrash/pseuds/scavengertrash
Summary: Kylo Ren, the newly christened leader of an imperialist galactic government, needs to make himself approachable. The best way to do this is to find a partner — or better, a mate. Without one to bring to the table, he's having trouble negotiating. But he doesn't want to engage with the vulnerability required in mating an Omega. What's an Alpha to do? Fortunately, his mother has ideas.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 117





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hagiography](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hagiography/gifts).



> This fic is a gift to the inimitable Mal, who has been a better friend and more patient beta reader than I deserve. I hope you enjoy it. God help me, this barely wound up working as a one-shot, so be prepared for the possibility that I just decide to add more to it arbitrarily. 
> 
> To everyone else, please mind the tags. The non-con tag is mostly for safety's sake because we're talking EXTREME dubcon of the classic A/B/O variety.

Omegas aren’t hard to find. The hard part is getting one that hasn’t been touched by half a dozen Alphas by her eighteenth birthday. 

That was what Armitage Hux sputtered out when he arrived in Kylo Ren’s office, defending his failure to acquire a fitting potential mate for the Supreme Leader. No one liked to deliver bad news to the worst Alpha in the Unified Colonies. Any Alpha could make a beta quake with the mere power of speech, but some were worse than others.  _ Skywalkers  _ were far worse than others. The Supreme Leader’s snarling demand for results rang deep in Hux’s eardrums long after he left Ren’s office. He threw the terminal monitor on his desk into the wall, shattering it and shaking several books off the shelves. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in historical artifacts, and he’d knocked pages loose.

The glass shook in the astroport frame with the force of it, and outside, Lieutenant Mitaka pulled the keys to the Silencer out of his desk. On his way out the door not ten minutes later, Kylo Ren did not even slow down as he snatched them from Mitaka’s hands and took the hover for a drive. 

“To the Lighthouse, Sir?” 

“Hold my calls until I return.”

#

The leather creaked under his strangling grip, but it was sturdy and familiar. The hover whipped between skyscrapers floating miles off the surface of Steadfast, the capital of the Unified Colonies. He dodged them with a steady hand. Each pillar was packed full with his people, people who expected him to lead them and to offer himself as the example of the ideal Alpha. 

“We don’t put three trillion credits into funding our military every year so that we can win hearts and minds. We do it to show power and control.” 

His grandfather had served the Emperor in that fashion at the birth of the empire, and Kylo Ren would do the same. Except the inhumanity of his solitude meant the Saghrans would not even meet with him to negotiate a trade arrangement because an Alpha who could not keep an Omega could not be trusted. So although Kylo Ren could think of little he wanted less than to share his power, his home, his bed with another human soul, his council of advisors insisted upon the necessity. At least for political appearances. At least for an heir to the empire he had solidified when he stole it away from Snoke. 

The Unified Colonies government would need no heir if he did not keep them unified, however. And greater concerns loomed than where he’d put his knot — like the surrender of the infuriating Resistance that had cropped up and taken to bombing shuttle stations. That the council would rather direct their attention to his personal life … It made him want to tear something apart. Bursting with bright and unchecked anger and no place to put it, he slammed his fist down against the hover’s yoke. 

It spun out. The undercarriage tilted left, the engine jerked right. The dynamics of it didn’t ultimately matter because what mattered is that it spun out, and in its spiral, crashed through the lower level of the Lighthouse. 

Accidents like this were the sort of unpredictable calamity that Mitaka spoke about when he urged Kylo Ren to allow soldiers to escort him between meetings. But the Lighthouse wasn’t a far drive, and it could not be aptly dubbed a Resistance base, for although they were insurrectionists, it was not hidden or armed. Technically they had simply neglected to cede full control of Steadfast to the Unified Colonies government. They wanted a representative on the council, and Steadfast had nominated his mother. The risk was minimal. Kylo Ren regularly refused these escorts anyway. He preferred to be alone. 

That was the root of this whole business. 

And so when the Silencer spun out and crashed through the bottom floor of the Lighthouse, Kylo Ren was as he wished to be: alone. Plasma dripped out of the engine and caught a spark from the damaged instrument panel, starting a fire that licked at his damaged helmet. That mask smothered his rage, contained it. A cup around a matchstick. He lifted the cup now, discarded the mask to get himself more air as he propped open the only accessible door of the hover. 

It was too late, by then. Smoke had filled the cabin, and Kylo Ren’s hand had not even touched the frame of the door when the strength left it, and he collapsed. 

#

“I’m not saving Kylo Ren.” 

“He’s not Kylo Ren. Look! No mask.” Despite Finn’s reasonable resistance to helping — he had, after all, suffered more at the hands of the Unified Colonies than any of them — Rey continued to drag the two hundred some pounds of unconscious driver away from the crash site on her own. It was the compassionate thing to do. 

“Okay, so he works for him. Big difference.”

“You worked for him, once.” 

“That was different.” 

Rey arched her eyebrows at him, and Finn swallowed his next remark. He didn’t help, but he did at least help the fire team smother the wreck. 

The lobby was done for. Tables and chairs and fine glass panels and fully grown pecan trees had all suffered in the crash. Rey propped the stranger up on one of the broken tables and brushed dark hair from his face. The flicker of skin contact warmed her. 

He  _ smelled good.  _ She’d heard Alphas like Leia and Poe make reference to scents before. Leia always knew when Rey was afraid, and Poe was always sniffing around Finn, an Omega who himself would account if pressed that Poe smelled like a campfire and diesel. But Rey was a Beta. To her, they all just smelled like sweat and person. 

Not this man. Even over the stink of electrical fire and leaking plasma, this stranger smelled like a warm blanket and pine logs. 

His hand darted up suddenly to grab hers, stopping her from yanking it back in surprise.

“Who—”

“Don’t move,” she said firmly. “You’re at the Lighthouse. It’s alright. We’re going to get you to the medical wing.”

He looked confused. Bewildered, maybe. Releasing Rey’s hand, he said. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Just like his father.” Rey looked up and saw Leia standing there, hands on her hips. “Don’t bother calling upstairs, Rey. He won’t stick around long enough for anyone to look him over, anyway. No matter how hard you try.” 

“Hello, Mother.” 

“Idiot. If you wanted to burn my base down, you could have sent an army.” 

“If it were a base, I might.” 

“Wait. Mother.” Rey pointed to the man. “Son?” Leia nodded. “So you’re … Kylo Ren.” 

Finn appeared beside her, wiping sweat from his brow. “Told you.” 

“Finn.” The Senator’s greeting made him smile. “Thanks for your help, both of you. You can get back to work. I’ll deal with my son.” 

The stranger — Kylo Ren — sat up with some effort, wincing as his ribs crackled on the way up. He shouldn’t be moving. Not like this. But righteous anger crowded in around Rey’s concern. That man was responsible for  _ everything  _ that had gone wrong on Steadfast. Her face grew hot. Finn helped her to her feet, too. 

“I wouldn’t have helped if I’d known,” she spat venomously. “You should have died in that shuttle. Then maybe your people would—”

“Would blame the Lighthouse, Leia, and whoever else is here that you care about.” Kylo Ren waved his finger at the upper floors vaguely. “They would have burned this place to the ground.” He looked to Leia, questioning whether the Senator would stop any of them from talking to him that way. He was, after all, their leader. In theory.

“If you don’t want people to disagree with you, you’re in the wrong line of work.” 

“You would know.” 

They excused themselves then. Leia, with a wry smile, and Kylo Ren without so much as a word. He did glance at Rey again, though. Briefly, while she dusted herself off. 

“Told you we should have left him,” Finn said.

“I’ll listen to you next time.” 

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Hey!” 

Rey elbowed him, then approached the smoking husk of Kylo Ren’s personal vehicle. She placed her palm against the still superheated hull. “Let’s get it into the garage. I doubt we’ll be able to get it operational in time for him to leave, but we can at least catalogue the parts.” 

“I’ll call Rose for the tow.” Finn pulled the phone out of his jacket. 

When the call was made, and Rey was picking through the interior of the vehicle, rubbing her hand along the disrupted mechanics of Kylo Ren’s infamous mask, she asked, “Hey Finn?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he … smell weird to you?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean, he’s an Alpha, right?” 

“Are you asking if I wanted to fuck Kylo Ren?” He looked insulted. “Just because I’m an Omega—”

“No! No, no, shit, I didn’t mean it like that.” 

“It sounded like you think I’m just a—” 

“I don’t.” Whatever nasty slur Finn had heard before that went along with the assumption that he would just drop trow for a man like Kylo Ren had certainly not been what Rey had in mind when she’d asked. But she felt suitably awful for asking, now. “But it’s not like I can … I was just curious.” 

Finn sighed. “He smells like shit.” Something in his voice sounded resigned — like he didn’t really want to answer the question, but because Rey was his friend, he’d made an exception. “Which is weird because you’re right, usually Alphas smell like sex and chocolate ad all things good in this world. Like Poe, right? But I’ve heard it from other Omegas who meet him, too. Ren does something with his scent, I think. Chemicals to suppress it. I don’t know. But it’s like … junkyard and smoke.” 

“Weird.” 

“Yeah.” 

#

The headache pulsed behind Kylo Ren’s eyes, creeping through his skull. Probably, it was a concussion. He’d have his own doctors look into it later. He didn’t trust Leia Organa with that. She could be cunning, his mother. That was how she’d survived this long. So when she sat him in a boardroom with a cup of tea, he didn’t touch it.

“You could have called,” she said by way of starting conversation.

“I’m not interested in talking.”

“I don’t mean for a social call. I know that you don’t want to hear from me. But I could have saved you the trip; I’m not signing anything until you get Sagh on board.” 

“That won’t be happening,” Kylo replied. His voice turned to stone. Leia couldn’t know what Sagh was demanding, or the criticisms they’d made. No. Who was he kidding? She definitely knew. Leia knew everything. He pushed the teacup away. She wouldn’t have tried to make nice if she didn’t know. “Is this your way of pushing for fat grandchildren?” 

“You can’t blame me for trying.” 

“No, I largely reserve that for the opposite.” 

Her refusal to try at motherhood had put this divide between them in the first place. Leia’s face fell like the wound struck deep. Good. She deserved it. Kylo rose from his seat, grimacing as he did and supporting himself on the table.

“If you refuse to negotiate, you will be subject to the same penalty facing Sagh. I have allowed the Lighthouse to operate this long out of respect to your hard work, but I will not—”

“You will not invade Sagh. And you won’t shut down the Lighthouse. Your councilmen won’t let you. The vote won’t pass. I’ve already polled them.” Leia lit a cigarette and kicked back further in her chair to get comfortable. “You’re new to this game, kid. But I’ve been here a long time.”

“I will force their compliance.”

“Then they’ll depose you. Your men all agree with Sagh, Ben. You’re too hard. No one trusts an Alpha that doesn’t know when to use a softer touch. It just isn’t natural.” 

“That’s not my name.” 

No one bothered them in here. They were alone. Except for the humming air conditioner, only the words passed between them even disturbed the air in the room. But speaking the name out loud felt like giving a voice to something Kylo Ren tried to leave behind long ago, a boy he could no longer be if he was going to rule the Unified Colonies. 

Sighing, Leia shook her head and sat forward at the table. “All I want is to make sure that the Lighthouse has a seat at the table — the one we were promised. Whoever you mate will be a part of that council.”

“And you would prefer it be one of your Omegas.” 

“The thought crossed my mind. Rose Tico is a nice girl, she—”

“No.” 

“Then you’re going to lose everything.” She tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette. “And war returns to the galaxy. I know that you don’t like me. You don’t trust me. You would never trust an Omega I picked. But we’ve got Finn here, too. He was one of yours. And Kaydel Connix. You choose. I don’t care. But I’m not signing anything you bring until you get Sagh and you put a Lighthouse member on your council. I’m offering you a way to solve both of your problems at once. Don’t be stubborn.” 

“You did say I was like my father.” 

“Your father died.” And Kylo Ren had killed him. There would be other Kylo Rens in the Unified Colonies government, just waiting for their chance to put a stubborn mule out of his misery. After a prolonged pause, Leia asked, “What are you so afraid of?” 

She reached her hand over the table as if to touch him, and Kylo Ren recoiled. His hands planted firmly on the arms of his seat, knuckles white. It had been so long since anyone had touched him at all, except for that girl. That girl. The one who had dragged him out of the wreckage of the Silencer surfaced in his thoughts. The spark of warmth when she touched his forehead. The vitriol she slung at him, and how it stuck unpleasantly between his ribs. It felt different coming from her than anyone else because she had been ready to offer him compassion right up until she knew who he was.

Maybe he was too hard. Maybe fear had failed him.

“I’m not interested in an Omega.” 

“A Beta, then. There’s no reason it needs to be an Omega. It doesn’t even need to be a real mating. Dose her with some of that chemical garbage you drink in the morning, and she’d still smell like she’d taken on your scent.” 

For the time being, Leia seemed to be thinking out loud. She took a long drag from her cigarette. Smoke burst into the air with her cough. Concern struck him like a thief in an alley. Shocking. Sudden. Before he ever saw it coming, he had to wonder — was she ill? It didn’t matter. She had been his mother only in name. Whatever else happened between them was just business.

And she had compromised, in that. A Beta would be better, wouldn’t it? A mated Omega, even one his mother had not chosen, would have sway over him. Even if he found one who hadn’t been touched by another Alpha. His mind would not be his own any longer. Perhaps it was the disorientation of his concussion, but the thought ruffled him. He had seen Alphas change after mating Omegas with his own eyes. They grew weaker. Distracted. 

“You want them to have a place on the council?” 

“I do. They’ll still be your spouse, after all.” 

“Very well.” Kylo Ren rose from his seat, his ribs screaming. 

#

Rey returned with Kylo Ren that evening. Sitting ramrod straight in the back of the hover beside him, staring out the window, she kept her hands in her lap. The privacy screen went up between their soldier escort and the two of them. Kylo Ren hung up his phone. 

“What was that about?” Rey asked without looking at him. 

“A doctor will be waiting to examine me when we arrive. It shouldn’t take long. Lieutenant Mitaka will get you situated, in the meantime.” 

“Lieutenant Mitaka?” 

“My secretary.” 

“Oh. Why didn’t you just let Cee look you over?” 

“My mother hoards information like a dragon hoards gold. I don’t plan to give her any more than I can help.”

“Your mother is a good person.” 

Kylo Ren snorted and said nothing more on the topic. The conversation lapsed. The rumble of the engines filled the silence until Rey asked, “Can I open a window? You smell…” 

“It’s a chemical suppressant. Newly developed.” 

“Finn told me.” She had not smelled the suppressant, herself. And she did not smell it now. She smelled wildflowers and sage honey. That was worse. Rey could cram herself into a car with Kylo Ren, agree to marry him as some political maneuver to get the Lighthouse’s voice heard, but she could not stomach the overpowering, enticing scent of him the whole way. “Is it supposed to smell like that?” 

“I didn’t realize Betas could smell it.” 

“Well, I can.” 

“You don’t bother keeping your opinions to yourself, do you?” 

He was trying to embarrass her because of how she’d shouted at him when he and Leia came through the garage. Rey snapped at him for the aftermarket modifications he’d made on his Silencer. The words ‘ticking time bomb’ were used, as were ‘the worst hack job I’ve seen since the Falcon.’ 

“That would make sense,” Kylo Ren had said, “since I learned it from Han.” 

Despite her fury, despite the burning hatred she felt for him and everything he stood for her, she might have done anything he asked then. He smelled like a bath bomb and he still hadn’t put his helmet back on and he was a fresh font of knowledge on the father figure she’d never really gotten to know. 

But the rest of her life was a long time to wager on those impulses. 

The slow, dawning awareness of what a terrible mistake she had made in agreeing to this made her unpleasant, even prickly. “Are you going to open the window or not?” 

“I don’t have my mask.” 

“So?” 

“I prefer for people not to see my face. If I don’t look like one of them, they’ll never mistakenly treat me as one of them.” 

“If I offended you by dragging you out of your Silencer, all you have to do is crash another. I promise, I’ll leave you this time.” 

But he didn’t look offended. In fact, when she raised the point, he looked brooding and distracted, as though he still couldn’t puzzle through what had driven her to extend compassion to him. As if he’d never seen anything like it before. That was impossible, of course. He was Han and Leia’s child. They were two of the most compassionate people she’d ever met. They’d saved her from a life of destitution in Plutt’s junkyard. 

“The window stays closed.” 

#

The whole length of Mitaka’s tour of the grounds, Rey scratched at her arms like she had hives. Her whole body itched. Maybe she was allergic to those chemical suppressants. Maybe all of this was some fever-dream reaction, and she’d come back to her good senses soon, and … 

“That’s it.” 

“What?”

“Uh, that’s everything. Was there something else you needed to see?”

Mitaka had concluded the tour of Kylo Ren’s estate in the living room, where Rey now came back to herself. She looked around. It looked like a museum. He had no television, no screens, and on the walls were antique paintings. Three thickly stuffed and floral upholstered couches each offered seating for two slim individuals. He clearly hosted few people here, and only to talk. 

“Where should I put my things?” She didn’t have much. A single back into which she had packed her favorite outfits. Leia and Kylo both insisted that Mitaka could go back for the rest another time. Now he looked clueless, maybe even a touch dim. “Uh, my clothes?” 

“Uh, the Supreme Leader’s bedroom is …” 

“Oh.” 

They stood in an awkward silence, both finally coming to equal footing in the matter. The marriage was a political sham. She hadn’t expected for this to be required of her. All sorts of queens and governors lived separately from their spouses. But Kylo Ren had not planned for such an arrangement. 

Rey tightened her smile. 

“I’m alright here, then. Thank you, Mitaka.” 

He looked sorry for her. Too fearful to act upon it, as so many were in the presence of her groom, but genuinely apologetic. Rey had wondered if maybe anyone in the government still had their soul. Now she knew: they were all simply too afraid to show it. 

Winding through halls of paintings and hanging sculptures, Rey made her way to the master bedroom. Leia’s voice wandered with her, reminding Rey that she needn’t put up with anything that she didn’t want, that it was her voice that Leia wanted for this. No one expected her to be less than she was, to roll over and succumb to anything like she was some, some …

_ Omega. _

Rey felt guilty for thinking it. Finn’s offended expression returned to her. 

Stepping into the bedroom, she rubbed at her face. All she needed was a good sleep. Things would make more sense in the morning, when this reaction had passed. She dropped her bag by the foot of the bed haphazardly and wandered into the bathroom. As she waited for the shower water to warm, she opened Kylo Ren’s medicine cabinet, which was built directly into the wall out of gleaming unmarked steel. Curiosity got the better of her and she sifted through hair and hygiene products idly.

The pint bottle of blue liquid smelled like death and alcohol. It wasn’t mouthwash. It was the same thing Finn had described. Kylo Ren used this to suppress his scent, but it was nothing like what she smelled everytime she was near him. That was impossible, of course, because it offered no explanation for why a Beta could pick up a scent off of him. 

She locked it away in the medicine cabinet, and — just like every memory of her parents, of Plutt’s junkyard — she resolved not to think about it. 

#

“Wake up,” rumbled a gravelly voice.

It must have been the middle of the night. Rey’s eyes shot open, though. Somehow she hadn’t woken before that despite sweating through Kylo Ren’s fine sheets. The last time she’d sweat like this, she’d had the flu. She’d gone through ten hours of brutal labor in Plutt’s junkyard anyway, though she recalled none of it except how she had shivered through every moment, and twice passed out in the backseat of a run-down hover. This was worse than any flu. 

She sat up.

“I’m sorry.” No. That wasn’t right. What did she have to be sorry for? He was the one who’d given her no other place to sleep, who’d planned for none of this. But he must have come back from the doctor’s to find her in his bed, and he’d been in a car accident. “Come lie down. It’s alright.” 

“Did my mother put you up to this? Impressive that she managed to hide your scent. Was that why you asked about my suppressant? I wonder how she got her hands on that. If you tell me, I’ll—” Nothing he said made any sense. The words hit her as if floating amidst a fog. Rey shook her head, trying to make sense of them, but the only thing she knew for sure had nothing to do with what he said at all. It was how he shook as he said it, the hard edge of his voice, and the pronounced whiff of anxiety that soured his scent. 

He was not pleased. And somehow, despite all her anger, despite the resentment she had cultivated for Kylo Ren over years, she didn’t like that. She very much wanted him to be pleased with her.

“Come to bed,” she asked again. “We can talk about this in the morning.” 

“I’m not touching you.” He snapped out the words. 

“Something’s wrong.” 

It occurred to her only in the space of a breath: she was disappointed that he would not touch her tonight. Rey staggered out of the bed. Her thighs were sticky, her underwear soaked through. Had she wet the bed? That seemed impossible. But no one in their twenties woke up with soaked sheets and sticky thighs except for Omegas who—

Pieces slotted into place. 

“Or did she hide it from you too?” Suddenly, Kylo Ren sounded not violent, not vengeful, but sympathetic. He drew nearer to her, crouched in front of her. Though he still did not lay a hand on her, he studied her face. “You didn’t know.” 

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry.” Another apology spilled out before she could help it. She had ruined a great deal. The marriage. The sheets. The good night’s sleep. And she preferred this immensely. The sympathy, the compassion, the closeness. She wanted to reach out and touch him, she wanted—

Her abdomen clenched, bowling her over. Rey gasped and planted her palms on the floor, as if she were in labor. 

“What’s happening?” She asked through gritted teeth, biting back the worst pain she’d ever felt. 

“Heat.” He sounded academically curious, if anything. But when Rey opened her eyes and found his, they were black pits. Hungry. That he remained at a distance from her spoke only to his self control, not a lack of wanting. “You’re going into heat. Your first?” 

Rey nodded.

“She wanted this to happen,” Kylo Ren said. It didn’t make any sense. He sounded  _ crazy.  _ No one could have guessed that this would happen because even Rey hadn’t known to expect this might happen. She was a Beta. Betas didn’t go into heat. “You’re just the weapon that she decided to use against me.” 

“I’m sorry,” she said again. 

He didn’t answer right away. When he did, he sounded curious. “How sorry?” 

#

“Tomorrow, I’m going to send you back to my mother’s,” he said as he stripped off his uniform jacket, more for his sake than hers. 

“Yes, Alpha.” 

Rey sat naked at his feet. No, not sat. Kneeled. He had never had cause to use the word in this context before. The only people who had kneeled to him had bowed their heads to the floor and pleaded his forgiveness. She kept her feet folded beneath her, seated at his feet and staring up at him with wide, watery eyes. Tears had paved white lines down her flushed cheeks. The pain must have been immense, by now.

The pungent smell of Omega hormones filled the room so fully that he wondered how he could have missed it before, how he hadn’t known. A girl her age must have presented ages ago, yet she claimed this was her first heat. It certainly seemed like it. She was so confused. But his mother must have taken a blood test. She had to know, somehow. This could not be coincidence. She had hoped a good Omega would bring Kylo Ren to heel. Instead, he would ruin her good, pure, untouched Omega. 

Oh, she was a miracle in herself. No Omega made it this long without an Alpha overtaking them. They weren’t always mated by 18, but enough of them were, and some Alpha had already knotted them regardless. An Omega’s heat made beasts of them, and you could always see it in an Omega’s eyes if they had been taken. It was always violent. It always left marks. 

He may not be an Omega, but Kylo Ren had some of that in his own eyes. If only she weren’t a trap. He could have saved her from that. He unbuckled his belt and let it fall away.

“It hurts,” she whimpered. “Please.” 

“Don’t ask for that,” he said, crouching in front of her. He took her chin in his hand. “I’m not going to mate you, Rey. But I’m going to give you the chance to show me that you’re sorry for this.” 

Desire and confusion clouded her eyes in equal measure. The spark of whatever he’d seen earlier was gone, wrung out of her by hormones and heat and hunger. Good. She wouldn’t argue. But her lip jutted out prettily, shining with spit, and he brushed his thumb over it. She looked so sad, so  _ pained.  _

“Do you know what helps with heat?” 

“An Alpha’s knot.” She pressed her palm to her abdomen, her fingers trailing down into the thatch of curling hair between her thighs. 

“I’m going to give you that.” His hand moved to cover hers. “But not here.” 

He was stronger than that, stronger than this. When he’d solicited suppressants from the scientists of the Unified Colonies, he had not expected this added benefit, that he would not go into mindless rut on smelling Rey’s slick. He could appreciate it entirely. He could remain in control. Straightening back to his feet, he pushed the band of his briefs. The firm slope of his erection revealed that he was not, perhaps, entirely immune to the effects of her present state. Just enough to keep his head. He had been hard since he first walked into his bedroom to find her sleeping there, sprawled out. 

What would she have done if he had invited himself to her cunt? If he had pressed inside without waking her? Would she have come to halfway through pleading for him with this same sweetness, or would she have cursed him? A dark corner of his mind insists  _ next time.  _ He flinches away from that thought. There would be no next time. He would be rid of her, after this. 

“Come here,” he told her, and she sat up on her knees. When she lifted her hips off her feet, he could see past her to where slick stuck to his carpet. Her scent would linger here haunting him long after she was gone. 

Kylo fed his cock past her lips. She knew what to do in this, at least. If she had not been with an Alpha, she had a Beta. A powerful surge of jealousy tore through him. He wondered what junkyard nothing she had been on her knees for last. 

“This mouth belongs to me,” he said. “No one else. Say ‘yes, Alpha.’” 

She made mumbled, incoherent noises around his cock, the approximation of agreement. Then she swallowed more of him down, setting a steady rhythm. Raising her hands, Rey gripped the base of his cock in her palm, massaging the raised, turgid strip of skin with her thumb. She was fascinated by him, just as he was in her. 

“Do you want that in your mouth too, Omega?” Agreement, muffled by his girth. She could barely take it as it was. Her lips would not bob that far down, not of her own accord. There was too much of him. But she wanted it, and so did he. Kylo pressed his palm to the back of her head. “Let me.” 

Incredibly, he felt Rey relax under his grip. The pitched anxiety of her scent softened. 

“That’s right,” he said. “I’m going to take care of you.” 

The notion sounded so foreign to him, anathema to everything he had built for himself in the Unified Colonies government, but he desperately wanted for her to believe him, for her to feel safe with him. Rey loosened up and he pulled her further down his cock. She hiccuped, hunched her shoulders. 

“Breathe through your nose.” 

He was no expert in this, but her scent afforded him some uncanny awareness. He’d never felt so attuned to another before, not like this. It was as if he could read her mind. Her instincts were his instincts, and her muscles an extension of his own. He petted her hair back, quelling tangles that had frayed free of her half-up style. Rey breathed, and he sank deeper into her mouth until the head of his cock glided into the narrow channel of her throat. 

Shuddering, he grabbed a fistful of her hair. He held her there by it. 

“That’s it,” he said as her lips closed to a seal at the base of his knot. The longer he held her there, the louder she whined. At first he ignored it, focused on his breathing and trying to steady himself so he didn’t come too quickly. But she was insistent, needy, and he could not deny her. “Do you like taking that knot? Doesn’t it help?” 

She nodded — just barely.

“Show me how much.” 

At first, she glided her lips up and down his knot, never slipping further down his shaft, but squeezing her lips tight to cling and drag along just the knot itself. A shiver rolled through his body. 

Religion had never made sense to him, but by God if she didn’t make him reevaluate that too with the warm wet of her mouth. His knees buckled just slightly, and he dropped his palm on the top of her head. 

“No. Not like that.” Though he enjoyed it, he wanted this to last. He wanted to see her enjoy it too. “Touch yourself.” 

Rey’s fingers pressed inside of her. He couldn’t make it out by sight, not past her hair and her shoulders and the tilt of her hips, but he heard the wet sounds, a steady squelching pump. He could imagine it was his cock pressing into her like that. For a moment, he wanted it to be. He wanted to hoist her off of him, throw her onto the bed, and—

He grunted. Too quick, too quick. Blowing a breath out his nose, he started to work his hips — slowly. The wet gagging as the head of his cock dipped into the back of her throat took up chorus with the work of her fingers, and her eyes drifted shut. She surrendered herself to his control, to the feelings that he created. He filled her every sense. Like this, she didn’t need to think. Just breathe and allow him to fuck her. This hole was his. Every hole was his. 

He understood, then, why his soldiers always changed. Why they would do anything for this. He would do anything for her, too. 

It was when he surrendered, finally, that he lost control. His body shuddered, convulsed, and he spilled down her throat, hot and sudden. When he clutched her hair like prayer beads and pulled her down on him, she did not scramble or fight. She moaned, and her throat rumbled around him. A pulse, a twitch. The frantic movements of her arm had not stopped, though the nature of the wet sounds beneath him changed. He registered it in a distant corner of his mind, but he could not make a meaning from it. Not as tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, not as her breath quickened.

Because while she reached her peak, his knot swelled. Her lips stretched around it, her jaw forced wide because it sat just between her teeth, compressed by her hard palate. 

Kylo caught his breath. Rey went boneless at his feet, her hands pressed to his thighs in a bid to keep herself up enough to not tug at him. 

With great care, they moved. Kylo settled on the edge of the bed. It would be several minutes before Rey could pull off of him, but his cock was already softening inside. He could feel less of her throat. But he could also feel the warm pool of his cum as it continued to flutter out with each twitch of his cock. The orgasm rumbled through him over and over and over and he thought it might never stop. Just as she had never felt an Alpha’s knot, he had never had occasion to do it. Not with anyone else. Not outside of rut. Shivers coursed his body with each new wave. He closed his eyes, too.

When he opened them again, he saw her staring up at him. He petted her cheek, which was warm and wet with tears. 

“Shh,” he told her. “You did very well, Rey. Do you feel better?” 

She didn’t answer him then. Not right away. But she did shut her eyes, soothed for now. 

#

Kylo Ren tucked her into bed. He brought her water and fruit and an ice pack for her jaw. She hadn’t even believed he was the kind of person who owned an ice pack, but it was a nice one. The expensive, flexible kind. Rey insisted that she wasn’t sore, but once it touched her skin, she found herself grateful for it, so she sprawled out in the bed and let him go back for the food and water. She hadn’t expected this from him. The person busying himself back and forth from the room was like a different person. 

Except, of course, that she could not claim he was different at all. She hadn’t known him. She’d barely met him, and in those moments, he’d been concussed. Still, it was hard to reconcile his kindness with the kinds of policies the Unified Colonies pushed. She lay in his bed, in his mansion, her stomach full of his semen and his food, her belly still intermittently aching, and realized that she did not know this man any better than she knew herself. 

_ Shit.  _

Rey sat up, ready to escape that thought and his bed as well, but vertigo hit her. She was not ready to be upright again. Too much blood was focused elsewhere in her body: digesting, swelling. She’d put so little effort into learning the ins and outs of Omega biology because it had always been foreign to her. Sure, she had Omega friends. Finn. Rose. She’d grown up in their midsts at Plutt’s junkyard because for some Omegas it was the only place they could find work that wouldn’t fire them for disappearing for days at a time when their heat came around. But it had never been her business. __

Now it was. It very much was. 

“This can still work,” she told him when he finally settled in the bed next to her. Something about his presence soothed the white noise sense that something was  _ wrong, terrible, about to fall apart.  _ That sense had been her constant companion through life, but somehow, he pacified it. It made talking to him easy. “Not … not mating one another, obviously. That’s insane.” 

“Then what, exactly, do you imagine?” 

She grew sheepish. He didn’t like that. Rey glanced away from him. Dissatisfied with that escape, she slung an arm across her face, burying her nose in her elbow. An annoyed sound slipped out of her as she wriggled her heels. This pathological craving for his approval troubled her. Would it make it harder to be on the council? Would his Alpha hormones make her the wrong person to contradict him? 

Maybe that was what Leia had wanted. A Beta specifically to avoid this mating, this hormonal reaction. Kylo Ren had his own reasons for preferring it, but … Surely Leia had sent Rey here to a purpose. She hadn’t sent Rose or Finn. She had sent Rey.

“I meant that.” Kylo Ren’s voice was so low and warm and pleasant. She could hardly believe it. He just  _ sounded  _ rich. She should have hated that. “Sometimes I sound like an asshole, even when I don’t mean to. It’s just …” 

“That you spend your days acting like an asshole so much that it becomes instinct?” She peeled her arm away from her face and studied him.

“You’re feeling like yourself again.”

“For the moment.” She propped herself up gently, delicately, on her elbows. No vertigo — yet. She wouldn’t risk further stretching. “I can still be the Lighthouse’s representative. No mating. I’ll take your scent suppressants and we’ll both smell disgusting to everyone else in that special way that makes it seem like you just spread your garbage scent all over me. And when things like this crop up, we can …” She rolled her shoulders a little. “Help each other.” 

“Help each other.”

“You need an Omega to get Sagh on your side. We need someone in the council. You don’t want to mate a real Omega—” 

“You  _ are _ a real Omega.” 

“— and I don’t want anyone to know I’m not a Beta. It sounds like we can make this work as long as we both agree to hate each other all the while.” 

Kylo Ren was quiet for some time then, watching her. The muscle under his eye twitched. Was that disapproval? Something tense radiated in his scent, but he was a tense man. It could be anything. She insisted upon this interpretation to the cramping in her chest that insisted she had done something wrong. The silence stretched out, well beyond comfortable, before he finally said:

“Alright.” 


End file.
